


The Act of Remembering

by ok_but_first_tea



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: AU, Angst, Bad Ending, Basically the whole gang is here, F/M, Major character death - Freeform, as much angst as my heart can bare so not that much, dav feels, everybody is sad, ipre reunion, major dav feels like Prepare Yourself, pregnancy mentions, taako typical angst, voidfish induced amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2019-04-03 16:56:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14000514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ok_but_first_tea/pseuds/ok_but_first_tea
Summary: Davenport gets inoculated, only sooner than planned.How do they react to being thrown into an unexpected reunion?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> it's too much angst for me to write. I cannot write angst. why am i writing this????? 
> 
> teen and up rating for general TAZ plot, like, it's not much more angsty than canon tbh (changed it to mature bc yeah)  
> also I'm blaming tfw discord for being to nice and supportive. How Dare.

 

_ Davenport. Davenport. Davenport. Davenport. Davenport. Cap’n’port. Daven-Wait what? _

It’s important. Somehow it’s important. He can’t lose it, it’s who he is.  _ Davenport.  _

Why is it so important?  _ Davenport.  _ Who?  _ No.  _ It’s important. 

_ Davenport. Davenport. Davenport.  _

But it’s wrong. It’s wrong, why is it wrong?

 

Davenport looks around the room- no, there’s static? Static of some kind. It hurts to look at. It hurts to think about. He can’t forget. He needs his crew.

Where is his crew? Where is-.... Where.   _ Davenport. _

 

_ Davenport. Davenport. Davenport. Davenport. _

 

The view, though. It’s breathtaking. There are  _ stars. _ There are stars everywhere.  _ Davenport. Davenport. Davenport  _ loves stars. Home.  _ Davenport. _

Home. He needs to go home. Where is he? He’s Davenport.  _ Davenport. _

That’s important.

_ Davenport. Davenport. Davenport. _

 

He looks around the static? Yes, there was static before, too. He doesn’t dwell on that, though. Thinking about it hurts. He can’t hurt right now. He’s looking for… something. 

_ Davenport. Davenport. _

It’s important.

Sometimes, it’s so painful to clam to reality, though he still does so desperately. But she tells him it’s okay. She says it’s alright.

And he trusts her. Madam Director, he trusts her. He always has. Even though most days he can’t comprehend her speech.

 

_ Davenport. Davenport. Davenport. Davenp _ -oof. That’s the ground. He thinks. It might also be static. Like everything, these days. Was there a time before the static? He can’t think about that. He cannot forget. 

_ Davenport. _

It’s important. 

 

“Hey little man! You look a bit dizzy.” 

He can’t- he can’t get distracted. He’ll forget if he gets distracted. 

“Davenport!” he yells.

‘Woah, hey there. I’m Avi, I’m the new guard of rxtcgvjhbk.” The man talks, but davenport can’t hear it. Can’t comprehend it. Briefly, he panics. 

Now the static has spread to his hearing, too.  _ Davenport! Davenport! Davenport! _

“You seem a bit distressed there, buddy.”

“Davenport!” he needs him to understand. He can’t forget, it’s important.

“Shit, are you even inoculated yet?” 

The next few moments are a blur for Davenport. Later he will remember a flask handed to him, and then a chuckle and something about the wrong flask, a different flask. Then it’s just pain. 

Not physical, not really mental either. It’s not even painful, really. It’s… something else.

It’s like standing at the edge of a ravine where the fog is clearing, and suddenly you’re hit with the realization how deep it is. It had always been there, and on some level he knew. But now? Now he could  _ see. _ And damn did it hurt.

 

The same second he comes by, he panics. It’s too much information, too much things have gone wrong. What happened? Where is he? 

_ Is this the fucking moon? _

He needs to make a plan. He need to regroup. They need to go, it’s been well over a year. Does his crew remember anything? Are they in the same state he is? Was? Is?

Davenport looks up, right into the eyes of the man. 

The man- the guard, what was his name? Avi. Avi stands in front of him, and by the gods, it feels so good to remember. 

Davenport straightens his back and faces the guard, his head held high. 

Here stands a man who once was the greatest pilot of his planet, the greatest pilot in the multiverse. Here stands a man who has faced the destruction of existence again and again for a century, a man who has died and survived. A man who has commanded a crew of the brightest minds, a man who gave his live to a mission. Here stands a Captain and not just any Captain. Captain Davenport of the Starblaster. Captain Davenport of the IPRE. And he is on a  _ mission _ .

Captain Davenport is back.

 

Davenport snatches the flask out of Avi’s hand. He only took a small sip, it’s still mostly full. 

“Uhm, thanks!” he says, already scanning the area for places where his ship could be. It had to be somewhere. He had to find it. He had to leave, to regroup. He is already running. 

Davenport is small, but fast. A hundred years of fighting haven’t left him defenseless. 

“Sure, little dude!” he hears from behind him where he left Avi. Then, a little softer “What the fuck.”

He runs. He doesn’t know where to, and maybe he is imagining things, but he feels the strings of the bonds pull and pull and pull him in the right direction. His feet run, he can feel the pain, only vaguely. He knows they hurt. He knows. He doesn’t feel it. He can’t, his head is way to busy processing. It had been  _ years _ . 

And where was his fucking crew?

He found it, eventually. The Starblaster. His home. He had to use a few brain cells to open all the areas he wasn’t supposed to go, but he was Davenport. He was like the moon pet, no one paid attention to him if he didn’t ask for it. 

Convenient. 

His stomach turned at the thought, but he didn’t have time for it, not right now. Right now, he needs his crew, he needs to leave, he needs a fucking explanation. 

 

While Davenport ran around the deck, he kept getting new memories. Or old ones. Ones that felt old, but ones he still had to discover like secret golden treasures on every turn he took in his maze-like brain.

It made him stumble over his own feet, all the emotions, all the time he’d lost. 

 

He found the starblaster. His home. His ship. As soon as he found his way inside, as soon as he securely put the flask with the-, it hurt to think about too much, still, but it was getting better. He already had so much more than the years before, and by the gods,  _ years _ . It had been years.

He lay it savely next to the steering wheel. 

Davenport was always good at following his instinct, and his instinct was screaming to go. His heart bonked in his chest. It was chanting Hunger Hunger Hunger Hunger and he needed to  _ leave. _

It could be here any second and if he was still here then they’d all be doomed. His crew. He couldn’t. 

Davenport- Captain. Captain Davenport (it felt so good to say, to think. That is his name). Captain Davenport mans the ship. He guides the ship up, steers it to the part of the overarching dome that is not yet fully build. The moon still in construction. 

He guides the ship up into the sky and he laughs. Happily. Manically. He laughs. He’s going to get his family back.

* * *

  
  


From the deck of the moon, Avi sees it all happen. He sees Davenport, who talks now? He sees Davenport take his flask, which at first is just kinda rude, but then things start, well, happening. 

The little dude runs around for a bit. Avi at first isn’t sure if he accidentally filled both flasks with liquor and got the guy drunk. He is so tiny, Avi doesn’t know how much alcohol it would take, but probably not a whole lot. But then he saw the ship, or at least it looked like a ship, but Avi hadn’t seen one like it before. That in itself wasn’t weird. It was more like an everyday occurrence when you’re working on a secret moon base made possible by a galaxy-themed jellyfish. What was weird was the screaming. What was weird was who the screaming was coming from. 

Her greying hair trimmed short neatly, her nails well kept, her hands clasping her staff and she’s screaming. 

“Davenport come down! Please! Come down, I’m- I'm so sorry Dav, Captain, please we need- I- I have a plan, we need to be here!”

Yes, that was rather distressing. But not as distressing as the next thing that happened. 

As the, “starblaster” (as painted neatly, if not a bit chipped, on the ship) sped away, the director became more and more- well, a mess. She was sobbing now, apologizing. Giving last minute directions to her business partner, Lucas Miller, who seemed about as distressed as Avi felt, but even more at lose what to do with the person, the usually so unflappable person, sobbing at his feet. 

And then it happened. The light. It was like she got torn apart. He almost didn’t notice when it started but it was over in a blink, and the Director had exploded into light. 

Strings of light. It was the single most beautiful thing Avi had ever seen, though in the moment it was hard to fully appreciate it. With everything going on and all.

A few, long seconds of silence followed. 

A few moments to process what had happened, and then when they inevitably still didn't fully understand, a moment to think of their boss. 

A moment where everybody waited, held their breath for her return, for the return of her, what was he anyway? Assistant? The return of her assistant, Davenport, who had so suddenly departed. But nothing came. Lucas stood as still as one possibly could. His breath was getting shorter though, and that just wouldn’t do. 

“Huh.” Avi said, breaking the silence. And suddenly all eyes were on him. 

He took a deep breath, and stepped up. 

These people needed some help, and he was always ready to give that. Apparently this was his life now.

  
  
  
  
  


* * *

 

  
It is the so many-th day inside the stupid umbrella. Lup sighs. In reality, she doesn’t really have a way to track time, being inside an umbrella and all, but it’s nice to believe time goes on outside the umbrastaff. Even if it is without her, it made the world outside a little more real. 

One of these days now, her brother would come find her. One of these days now, her husband would free her. 

One of these days...

 

It’s hard to keep clinging to her consciousness, to her sanity. Sometimes she was sure she’d missed a few days staring at the curtains around her, her mind blank and uncooperative, but still she was sure. Of course she couldn’t be sure. 

At some point, she was sure she should have passed the year mark. But her brother  _ had _ always said that her internal clock was really bad. Which is why she always counted on him to know the time for her. Get it? /counted/. She snorts at her own joke.    
She’d always gotten bored quickly. Too quickly to reliably know the time because to her everything felt like decades when she had to sit still. And there isn’t a lot more to do inside an umbrella than sit still. Stand maybe? Lie down, but lying down became a whole lot less entertaining when you’re a lich and you can’t sleep or nap. 

A dream would be really well received right now honestly. Even a nightmare, fuck she’d take hallucinating over this fucking nothingness.

She is counting every third time she set something on fire, trying to make a song from it, when she feels it starting. 

 

A familiar, a way to familiar light. All the treads pulling at her. Her hands, but not her hands. Her legs, but not her legs. In reality, her soul. 

Her soul was being pulled apart and it pulled and pulled. She felt euphoric. Hell yeah! This was the kind of vivid hallucination she needed to keep herself entertained! But it wasn’t. It felt to real, too familiar to be fake. 

Then the panic set in. If they were resetting then the hunger must have found them. Were they fleeing, were they leaving this planet with all the relics on it, for the hunger? Would the light even follow them, having broken into seven pieces? Had they recover the light like she had wanted to? There were so many questions and Lup’s only comfort, if it even was a comfort, was that as soon as she’d reset there would be answers. And oh. OH. She was going to see her brother again, and barry. Oh, barry, I’m coming your way, she thought. 

Taako would probably laugh when she’d say that she’d felt like years had gone by. Call her a dramatic doofus. 

She would smooch her husband brains out the second she’d see him. She’d- and that’s when she lost her thoughts. 

The light that had consumed her, that was her, was dimming and she found herself in a room. There was static everywhere and what was even going on? How did she get here?

Her hand was holding that of someone. He was an elf too, his hair in a similar style as hers, though the whole boy had been doused in a good portion of static too. They quickly let go of each other and Lup took notice of a woman wailing her heart out in the corner. 

Where is she? Who are these people? What the fuck is going on?

  
  


* * *

 

 

Taako is on the run.

The faces. Those were the worst. The faces of all those people, on loop in his head, their last hour. And they’d spent it going to his shitty show, too. 

Taako had done something bad. He’d fucked up so bad there was no return now, he could barely look at his hands, he’d puked five times since he.. Since he- the accident. Since the accident. 

 

It was all a blur. A timeless blur where the faces were always present. He’d ran outside.

He should have helped- he couldn’t help. He ran outside. 

He’d seen Sazed and he hadn’t noticed Sazed’s reaction, but by the gods the man must have been terrified. 

 

He could still feel the insistent fingers on his back. Gently, or maybe not so gently, fuck if he knew, leading his to where ever. Taako didn’t know, he is on the run

They drove. They stopped and then drove on. A wagon and then another and another. 

And then Sazed was gone and he’s on his own. He is alone and everything is wrong. 

Taako scoffs. Of course everything is wrong, he just- he... Forty people died. 

They are dead now. 

All of them, forty people. Taako already couldn’t remember all of their faces, but he remembered the sounds. 

Actually, the sounds might be the words. Every time someone opened their mouth he expected them to choke. Fuck, even if they didn’t open their mouths. 

 

He takes a deep, steadying breath, and immediately steps to the side of the road and hunches over. 

He is alone. Alone. Alone. No one is there. If he dies, no one would notice. 

He'd deserve it, too, but he can’t think like that now. There are probably people going after him. Trying to find him to put him into jail. He’d deserve it, too,  _ but he can’t think like that right now.  _

Right now, he has to survive. Unlike those people, his head chimes in, very unhelpfully. 

He needs to hide. He hears a wagon in the distance coming closer. He should hide. Actually, the wagon might just be his ears ringing. He is so tired. The world starts looking a little pale, and he feels something pull at him. He tries to sidestep before he falls into his own puke. He’s not about to fall that low. It keeps pulling at him though, and surprisingly he doesn’t fall over. Or at least it doesn’t feel like it. Though, he ponders, you never really notice falling over when you faint. 

He doesn’t though. Fall over or faint, he doesn’t do either. He should hide, before the wagon arrives. He can’t though.

Taako is rooted to the spot, or, no. No, that isn’t right. Taako is hovering in the air. He can feel solid ground under his feet, though his feet have ceased existing. 

Deep breathes. Deep breathes. Now is not the time to panic. And it’s not. Because the next moment his vision is returned. 

Someone is holding his hand. Someone is looking at his with the same expression he probably has on his face. He is in a room and there are people here. And in a moment of panic-fueled clarity, he thinks this is it. They must have found him and brought him here and now he’s going to jail. 

There’s a woman crying in the corner, she’s wearing red too. Just like him. She must have done something bad, too. Just like him. 

He doesn't pay her any mind. He needs to leave, escape. Now he still has the change. He should hide.

 

* * *

 

Taako Taaco, the Wizard Chef. The murderer, or maybe not. 

Even since he heard the rumour about the chef a year or so ago, it hadn’t sat right with him. Angus Mcdonald, Greatest Detective, would figure out the mysterious murderer and the rumour of how he exploded into light. Angus would find the one who killed those people, mark his words. 

Between the weird rumours and stories about light explosions, and the static surrounding certain Big Events his brain still refuses to think about, Angus has plenty to investigate. 

He had reason to believe that the mysterious organization covering up for the Big Events and the people involved in the Light Explosions might be related, and it was high time to involve the organization in his case. Starting with the big, round cannonball he’d found coming from the moon.

How the moon factored into all of this is only one of many, many mysteries on Angus’s ongoing list of things relating to the Big Complot.    
Angus needs to be smart and find ways to think around the gaps in his brain, the gaps other people skipped over. Luckily for him, Angus is great at being smart. 

So he entered the cannonball, anticipation making him almost light-headed. 

Angus was about to find out the mystery in the world. Angus Mcdonald, Greatest Detective, at the ripe age of eight years old, was about to meet Director Avi of the Bureau of Balance. He was about to uncover journals and pages telling unimaginable stories. He was starting on his lifetime long journey to tip the world over to the right direction in a time of chaos and confusion. He would come to call Director Avi “dad”, and together they would fix it- All of it. And he would be amazing. 

But for now: Angus sat inside the ball and looked outside, not knowing about the great adventure he was starting, not knowing about the family he would find along the way.

  
  


* * *

 

Barry J. Bluejeans is a normal man, with normal wishes. One of those wishes includes wanting to wake up, preferably in a bed, and not covered in slime. In his opinion, a very understandable thing to want. But here he is. 

Covered in slime. 

It would be nice to say this is the first time it happened. But that’s not the case either. Nooooo sir, it had happened every time he died so far. Which was related to another wish of him; Not wanting to die. Again, a very understandable and normal thing to not want to do.

For as much as Barry was a very normal man with very normal wishes, he had some rather odd quirks. Like the way he could look at the sky for hours, like he’d never seen it before. Or how he felt a hole in his chest like a physical pain. Not even like empty space, but more like negative space. Something wasn’t there and it didn’t leave a hole, it left something empty, alive, and eating him. It left a creature, constantly screaming inside him, tearing him apart from the base of his gut to high in his throat. 

He’s also kind of scared of water. 

It makes him uncomfortable, in some way. Like it’s something he should know how to deal with, like somehow there was a time he did know, but he can’t quite reach it. It makes the creature in his chest roar up until he has to force tears back into his eyes and chase the static from his mind. All the static. It terrifies him. 

But all the water in the world can’t keep Barold from killing that damn creature in his chest. 

So he takes the clothes in the chest next to the fucking slime machine he tumbled out of. He pockets a wand and a spare pair of glasses and he listens to his own voice, as he gives himself (and how does that even work?) instructions. 

 

 

Barry is dead. Barry is dead and with him went the creature inside. In its place he feels a bright hot fire, barely contained inside of him. 

His mind is spinning.

_ Lup. Lup. Lup. Lup. Lup. Fisher. Lup. Lup. The IPRE. Lup. Lup. Lup. The hunger. Lup. _

Barry is dead, and for the first time since the last time he died, he feels alive. 

He has to find her. Where is the rest? What is happening? Oh no.

He died again. He has to start again. No no no no no. He takes a deep breath, sort of. He goes through the motions of taking a deep breath, and steadies his form. 

Let’s take it easy, he thinks. Start simple, and go from there. 

What does he know?

He’s at the bottom of the ocean. 

His old body is thoroughly entertaining a school of fish. 

His lich form not so much. 

Lucretia is still on her relic hunt, probably. 

Lup was not in the secret underseas “science” institute, nor is anyone else anymore, for that matter. He scoffs. How dare they use “science” as an excuse to.. Well. it doesn’t matter now. Both because he has more, bigger things to worry about right now, and because he completely wrecked their place. 

He should go grow a new body. He should go back to land first. The bottom of an ocean is not a great place to dwell for a lich who feeds on his own love for others, for obvious reasons. 

Well. Time to go back to the drawing table, he thinks. And so he starts his way back across the ocean floor. He could probably teleport, but he really needs to get his mind straight right now. The walk is nice, too. He can see some nice fish. One giant, well uhm, he’s not sure what to call it. One big thing tried to eat him. Barry was almost sad for how hard the beastie tries to eat him, but no luck. 

“Next time you’ll sure get it, buddy” he tells him, which freaks the fish out enough for it to stop trying to eat him and leave him alone. Fair, given that they’re at the bottom of the sea and he doesn't think the fish has ever heard someone speak before. Besides, Barry’s voice can be kinda spooky in his lich form.

 

Once he arrives at the nearest shore, and finds a little village, he finally remembers to turn invisible. Not before scaring the bones out of an old lady hanging her laundry, but he remembered. That Kravitz guy would start showing up soon enough, and he needs to be more careful. On the other hand, he did just die and he is allowed to be kind to himself so he doesn’t beat himself up too much over it.

The marketplace he walks into is peaceful, but there are enough people around for it to look like something is taking place. Probably a market. 

It looked like a quiet, sleepy town, but nice. A place he could see himself settle down with Lup and the rest when he found her. Lup and Taako would surely appreciate the fresh vegetables the market seems to supply in abundance. 

The ocean would be great for Davenport, he’d always wanted to travel more than just looking for the light and fleeing. Barry has always thought home must be not a place for their captain, but a feeling. One of freedom. 

Magnus has always loved places that aren’t packed. “More place to build” he’d said, what felt like a lifetime ago. It might actually be a lifetime ago. And of course Merle would love the sea, as does Lucretia. He could still see her at the side of the beach, notebook in hand, enjoying soaking up the last rays of sunlight. 

Barry would be happy anywhere they were. 

Now though, they are not here right now. And he misses them so much.

 

And that’s when he feels it. First, he’s unable to keep his form straight. his lich body flickering in and out of sight for all around him. The light shines first from his fingers and then it climbs up to his entire body. 

The marketplace he walked into is brought completely to a standstill watching this guy appear out of nowhere and immediately dissolve into light. 

He’s starting a whole lot of commotion, too. That Kravitz guy will have a very easy time finding him this time. Oh well, that’s not so bad. Maybe he’ll get a kick out of it, the guy seems nice enough. 

It’s familiar, though. The feeling. He’s had this feeling before, but when? 

Oh. Oh no. Is this your doing, Lucretia? He thinks.

He can’t go now, what if Lup is on this plane, what if he’ll never find her again? What if- What.

What is going on?

 

* * *

 

About a few years ago, seven names appeared in his notebook. Some with last names. Some, curiously, without. At first he thought it might have been a mistake. 

Someone called “Taako Lup” with a death count of eight.  _ 8 _ . And he had never before even appeared in his book. Directly under “Taako Lup” though, there was one “Lup Taako”, besides having an even higher death count, “Lup Taako” is also a lich, which he didn’t even want to get into. 

He had “Lucretia”, no last name. 

“Captain Davenport”, which was weird because titles usually don’t make it into the afterlife, but he'd seen weirder before.

“Barry J. Bluejeans” and that’s not a name, but that's not for Kravitz to decide. It bothered him that the middle name just said “J.” though. His actual middle name was “J.”, but alright. That’s fine. Kravitz can deal with it. "Barry J. Bluejeans" is also a lich.

“Magnus Burnsides” a respectable enough name. And then lastly “Merle Highchurch” with a death count Kravitz was still slightly convinced had to be wrong.

The names had appeared together, and the death counts didn’t get higher, with the exception of Lup Taako, who had died one more time since appearing on paper. They hadn’t died really quickly a bunch of times, though, so that is not why they were suddenly in his book with an absurdly high death count. It was like they had come into existence with these death counts. An error of creation. 

But no. It wasn’t. 

It was, however, why his Queen had appointed him for the job, specifically. He liked the more complicated ones. 

And in the beginning, he really had liked this case. Now though? Oh, now he was pissed. 

Out of all of them, Barry J. Bluejeans was the only one he could actually, occasionally find. And even then. Sometimes he’s be in lich form and they could have an almost normal conversation. Sometimes he wasn’t and he’d kill himself on sight, making his score even higher. 

Always, he overpowered Kravitz. 

Today, Kravitz was done with it. Today, Kravitz had woken up, looked at his list. Lup Taako had been nowhere, and he highly suspected Lup Taako and Taako Lup to have at least something to do with each other, so he put those two on hold for a while, in the hopes it would maybe sort itself out. Who knows, maybe it was a weird clone issue. Wouldn’t be the first one he’d find. Lucretia he had given up on about one month in, as soon as the people he asked told him what he said sounded like static, as soon as he now had to factor in a whole other moon, he gave up. Captain Davenport was impossible. Nothing on him, no leads, not even dead ends. Nothing. That's when he went after Barry.

Barry had been like a breath of fresh air. Kravitz almost didn’t mind it was still the hardest bounty he had ever hunted. The man actually seemed to exist all, which was more of a relief than Kravitz would ever admit. 

And then he’d found Barry. And then Barry had escaped. And then he was back at square one. 

It went like that a few times, and honestly? Kravitz is getting desperate. So, today is the day he’s going to put this one to the side too. He had more than Barry "Have You Seen My Wife" Bluejeans. He went to look at the list, see who he wanted to go for next. He was pretty sure Magnus Burnsides was next on the list. 

But low and behold, the names were gone. Vanished. Missing. Away.

Leave it to the seven of them to be impossible once more.

He checked the sea of souls but no dice. They had just… gone. 

 

So after some investigation, Kravitz had discovered a few things;

  1. Magnus Burnsides had been leading a revolution and if he had even looked for maybe two days, Kravitz would have easily found him.
  2. Merle Highchurch was unhappily married, but similarly easily to find. 
  3. Neither of these people have any proof of existing before they showed up in his book, according to their partners
  4. A lich in a red robe had been spotted messing up an underwater science facility that had been illegally experimenting on animals. Kravitz concluded that must have been Bluejeans, no other way
  5. Later the lich had been spot near SeaShed Pass
  6. All three of them, and supposedly, all seven of them, have exploded into strings of light



 

Kravitz was at a loss of what to do. He’d reported the recent changes to his Queen, who was in a similar state.

Not even days after this all happened, he noticed another curious thing. The Relic Wars had stopped. It took some days to realize, because normally people forget almost as soon as they happened (which was odd all on its own, but not Kravitz responsibility). But they had actually stopped. 

The relics were gone. Instead, in their place, was chaos. 

A town that had apparently been in a time bubble, whose inhabitants had died over a hundred times somehow, had been permanently consumed by a large worm, and then immediately aged five or so years so no one could identify anything anymore.

A crystalised workshop fell from the sky, crystallizing an entire island, killing all inhabitants in the process. The island now inhabited by sentient robots with souls of which Kravitz was pretty sure were not from this plane. 

Two rogue liches feeding on suffering and dread were on the loose after their Maze of Suffering, lacking the pull of the relic, wasn’t attracting enough visitors anymore. And those are just the direct results.

Kravitz is getting some serious migraine from the whole ordeal. Lucky for him, though, he doesn’t have to ever hunt them anymore. 

He takes his scythe in hand and gets ready to rip a portal just outside of the woods surrounding the old ruins of "Wonderland". He’s got some liches to hunt.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Fuckening Has Begun. (and also ended) have fun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for mentions of pregnancy in this one and also death is something i should mention.

 

Today is a good day, Magnus thinks when he steps out of bed. Julia is still asleep when he kisses her forehead. She grumbles and he laughs. 

He’ll make her some breakfast before he goes. 

While baking up some eggs, he hears Julia stumble down the stairs. Her morning stumble familiar enough to be comforting him somewhat. 

He isn’t nervous. He is a big guy. A strong man. He can handle some Craftsmanship Showing. He worked hard on the chair, too. It might not be perfect, but it’s the best he can do and he likes it. 

Julia wraps her arms around his waist from behind him, and kisses somewhere on his shoulder blade, the highest she can reach. 

“Hey you.’ he says.

“Ggrrmmgrrmr.” she answers. It’s too adorable to handle. 

He turns around to kiss her sleepy face good morning when she abruptly steps back. 

‘Oh no.” she whispers, before hurrying down the hall to the bathroom. 

Magnus is appropriately concerned. He quickly sets the eggs to the side, making sure nothing will burn before hurrying after her.

“Jules?? Jules?!” he yells through the door. Okay, maybe he is a little bit more concerned than appropriate. Just a smidge. 

He can’t help it, though. Sometimes his heart feels like it lost so much and every year feels like he should lose it all. He has no reason to feel like that, but still. It’s what makes him cling to Julia at dark nights, or light nights. Any night, really. 

He can’t lose her. Not her.

Lucky for him, Jules doesn’t mind. She doesn’t mind his screaming nightmares, yelling names he genuinely doesn’t remembers, but his mouth makes the shapes like he’s remembering how to chew. Like he’s said them a million times. Presumably in other, similar, nightmares.

Julia doesn’t mind that the name of where he grew up isn’t on any map. Julia doesn’t mind when he cries at animal cruelty in stories. 

Julia loves him. And he loves her. 

And currently, she is throwing up out of nowhere and he is supposed to leave in three hours and what if she is sick and he’ll have to stay home of course and-

“Magnus, honey?” Julia says through the door “You better not be freaking out right now.”

“I’m not!” he said defensively. His voice is a tad lower pitched than normal, and he put the focus on the last syllable just a bit too much. Something Julia immediately recognises as his “freaking out” voice.

“Listen honey, you just go back to the eggs, I’ll be there in a minute okay? I’m alright, I promise.” She hears him hesitate, “Trust me.” she says, and of course he does. Of course he trusts her. So he does what she says. He goes back to the stove, finishing up the eggs while nerves eat at him. He hears the tap in the bathroom turn on and off, and a century later Jules finally comes back to the kitchen for him to be Definitely Not freaked out about. 

“Okay, so, explanations are in order.” she says. “Damn, I was going to do it all nice when you came back and you’d have won the contest.” 

He methodically puts the eggs on plates and manages to get them on the table without dropping them. His hands shaking. He looks at her.

“Jules?” He says, his voice rough. Julia sits him down, and then nervously sits down close besides him.

“Alright, so, don’t- don’t be nervous okay.”

“I don’t think i can promise that.” He tells her honestly, his big eyes staring at her like he’s just waiting for her to stare into his soul. Vulnerable. 

She takes his hand in hers, smiles nervously, and without breaking eye contact puts it on her belly. 

His big, calloused hand is ever so gentle as she spreads out his fingers over the fabric of the t-shirt she’s wearing. An old one of Magnus. 

His nose scrunches up, and it’s almost too adorable for Julia not to kiss, but this is important. She knows for all the odd gaps in his memory, for all the odd things his brain sometimes conjures in their place, her Magnus isn’t stupid.

She can see the wheels in his brain turning. He’s staring at his hand on her belly when his eyes snap up to hers, wide and already filled with tears.

“Are you serious?” His voice is rough.

“Yeah.” Her voice breaks, and her face is already snotty from crying, but it’s okay.

Magnus pulls her in for a kiss that should be rough, but is so, so gentle. And it’s okay. It’s all okay.

_ They’re going to be a family.  _

 

Magnus was on his way to the fare, a nervous jitter in his step. 

He was going to be a father. He couldn’t believe it. 

No really, he couldn’t believe it. For some reason his brain got stuck on it. 

He’d never expected to become a father, ever. He liked children well enough and of course he wanted to start a family with Julia. He would love this child with all his heart and more if possible. 

The idea of starting a family though, it shook something loose in his chest, and made his brain all weird tingle-y. He quickly steered his thoughts away from that particular subject.

He was going to be a father. 

Magnus couldn’t be happier, if only that little, fuzzy voice in the back of his mind would agree.

 

He is just setting up his things when it happens. He puts down his chair and waves at some people he vaguely recognizes. All the normal stuff. Only the people were looking at him strangely, and suddenly everybody is looking at him strangely. 

At first Magnus was too in his head to notice the feeling, but it’s hard to miss light coming from your hand. Light coming out of your hand.

He stares at it, waves his hand in the hopes the light would fall of, but instead his fingers are  falling off. Or, no, they aren’t falling, they’re  _ transforming _ . They’re transforming into the very light he’d been trying to shake.

Magnus is getting seriously spooked now.

He can’t let anything happen to him, he is going to be a father, he needs to be there for his wife, for his  _ child. _

_ Their baby. _

Deep down, Magnus knows he won’t see them again. He doesn’t know what is happening, or why he knows, but instinctively he feels it. He tries to ignore the feeling.

He looks to his side, to his mentor. Stephen is looking pretty spooked himself.

“Tell Julia I love her.” He says, rather impulsively, but his voice doesn't waver. He feels his gut turn and it takes every ounce of self control not to scream and run. But if this is really his last.. His last what? He doesn’t know what. His last moment here? His last moment alive? That doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t matter anyway, not now. 

Now, he doesn’t know what matters. There has to be something.

Listen, he’s panicking. Anyone would be panicking in a situation like this!

He looks into Stephens eyes, looking for something. Comfort, maybe. He sees his kind eyes and thinks “well, goodbye friend. It's been a good year.” Which doesn't even make sense one bit.

 

He wakes up in a room he cannot see clearly. There’s a woman crying loudly in the corner. There are two elves, and another human man. There's a dwarf standing close to a gnome who is right behind the steering wheel.

And the first words out of his mouth will probably be the most heartfelt words he'll ever have said from that point onwards.

 

“What the fuck?”

    
  


* * *

 

  
  


Merle is standing in line for groceries. And then he’s not anymore. 

He has the groceries, though. And he is on the way home, so he assumes he must have gotten from A to B somehow.

He gets home at four. That’s nice, he thinks. Must be enough time to….

……….

…..

To unpack groce- oh it’s six now. 

Well that’s fine. That happens sometimes. Often. Most of the times really. Where the time went was honestly one big mystery to Merle. One of life's big enigma's.

It's happening even more now he’s living alone. Even more now he doesn’t have other people to remind him how to pretend to live.

 

He’s out in the garden when it happens. 

He sees his hands light up. He sees it because he’s planting stuff. In his garden. 

And then suddenly he’s not in his garden anymore.

There are people here. He thinks they might be saying something but fuck him if he knows what. 

He stops trying to follow the conversation. 

He knows he was just in his garden, and now he’s here. It doesn’t feel like he made his way here, but then again it never really does. He must have gotten from point A to point B somehow, after all. 

He decides to sit down. Better to not say anything and make a fool out of himself in front of these people. 

He sees some nice stars. The conversation continues in the background.

“Space huh?” He says, against his better judgement. “Neat.”

He feels like it wasn’t the right thing to say, but hey? What can you do?

Not all days are winners.

  
  
  


* * *

 

  
  


The starblaster is full, and it is full of his family. 

Davenport can’t contain his smile. 

He is steering his ship, and his family is back, and they have escaped. 

Only now is the beating drum of “HUNGER. HUNGER. HUNGER.” in his ears and heart lessening.

“What the fuck?” He hears Magnus say over Lucretia’s frantic crying. 

“Magnus!” Davenport, no- Captain Davenport says, “Good to have you back!” 

Magnus is looking seriously upset, though, and oh yeah. That’s right. Fisher’s memory water.

“It’s okay, don’t worry.” he tells him. “If you drink from the flask you’ll be back to normal soon enough.”

Magnus doesn’t look very convinced. Which is very fair given the circumstances. 

He steps away from the steering wheel, even if it hurts to let it go, and grabs the flask to give to Magnus, when Barry speaks up.

“Sooo, like, did we have some crazy party or something? Because I’m going to be honest here; I don’t really remember anything about how I got here.”

Lup snorts. 

“Babe,” she says, “I have no idea either, but like the way you’re thinking.”

Captain Davenport rolls his eyes. Of course, the first thing they do is flirt. He missed them.

“Children, can we please focus.” he says, calling attention, “the water in the-”

“Space huh?” Merle pipes up. And soon enough all of them, with exception of Captain Davenport, are staring out of the windows. 

It’s quiet. 

Then merle tunes in again, this time with a semi-enthusiastic “Neat!” 

His eyes are glazed over. Davenport- 

and god that feels wrong now. Like he’s still trapped in his mind. He’d never thought he’d see the day his  _ name _ would have too many negative associations. 

The Captain, that's better, recognizes Merle’s state from the bad cycles they'd gone through. The ones Merle doesn’t remember because his brain thought it was better to shut him out. 

Merle’s dissociating, and it’s bad, but the Captain can figure that out later. Right now his crew, or most of his crew, doesn’t know who he is. Which is definitely a priority for him.

 

“Magnus, don’t worry. You just need to drink it.” the Captain says. He looks over at Magnus, his expression as open and honest as he can manage. And Magnus, thank the gods, trusts him. 

He slowly raises the flask to his lips, not breaking eye contact with Davenport, and takes a small sip. 

Immediately, he is bombarded with memories, and love, and so much understanding. He looks up at Davenport, recognition now in his face. 

“We need to go back.” He says. Which, honestly, Captain can’t say he wasn’t expecting that a little bit. Magnus is handing the flask out to Merle, who takes it. Merle doesn’t have much of a reaction as he sips it like a fine wine, and he places it back into Magnus hand. 

“Magnus, you know we-”

“You don’t understand,  _ we need to go back. _ ” He says. It’s not the frantic, wide eyed stare that is concerning him, but the tone. He says it like he truly needs to go back.

“Magnus, what do you-” again he is cut of.

“My wife is pregnant.” 

Davenport winces. Curiously, Merle does so, too. 

“Uhm, so, I’m very sure you’re all..” Barry motions his hand vaguely through the air, “but I mean, we got to here, so logically, we should be able to go back. No worries, right?”

The Captain looks on awkwardly as he reaches for the flask in Magnus’s hand, and hands it to Barry.

Magnus, meanwhile, has taken to staring quietly at Lucretia in favor of talking any more about his wife.

Barry asks to clarify that he is supposed to drink it. When Davenport reacts with a soft but firm “Yes.” He puts the flask to his lips, too. And oh. Hey. That makes a lot more sense now. 

He isn’t hit by all of it as hard as he probably should. He has done this kinda thing before, and so recently too. He turns to Lup and hands her the flask, tears in his eyes. 

Lup doesn’t hesitate before throwing some of it down her throat. 

Her reaction isn’t immediate but it is heartfelt.

“Babe?” She says.

Just as Barry wants to respond, a hard, precise  _ thump _ comes from their side and when they look over, they see Magnus standing above Lucretia’s unconscious form. His expression says murder but his eyes scream lost. 

The deck has a sudden lack of crying and they find, for as much of a duality they are feeling, no one really minds. 

Then Lup looks around. 

“Guys.” she says, serious and distraught. “Where’s Taako?”

 

* * *

 

 

Run. Run. Run. Run. 

He needs to hide. 

They have found him and they’re going to kill him and he saw how that woman reacted and they definitely know more than him because Taako knows jack shit at this point.

Taako is running. Down the halls he doesn’t know, but somehow he comes at a door anyway. He doesn’t look before opening. All he knows is that he needs to leave and he needs to do it  _ right now _ .

He doesn’t look before opening the door. He needs to leave. He doesn’t look.

 

His last thought that cycle are: “oh, pretty stars.” while the door closes automatically behind him.

 

The Starblaster is chaos. Taako is floating outside, frost covering his face.

Lup can’t watch it, but at the same time, that her brother and he’s so close only not?

She can’t watch it. She holds Barry close and buries her face in his neck.

It’s good she does because if she hadn't, surely she'd have fallen over by the next thing that happens. It is the sound of a loud _Thwap_ on the outside of the ship, and a then lot of commotion as everybody tries to regain their balance. Everything is falling over and it takes a while for everyone to notice what’s happening. They’d flows right into a meteor belt.

The Captain rushes to the steering wheel. While he flies through the belt, Lucretia lolles uselessly over the floor. Merle is laying down too now, but he seems perfectly happy with that.

 

It wasn’t until they landed short after they’d noticed their fatal mistake. Something they'd come to regret for the rest of their lives.

They’d dropped the flask. The water had sloshed out. it was unsalvageable. 

 

It wasn’t until they saw the light fall, that they realized how truly they’d fucked up.

Seven near identical small bits of light fell down all around the seemingly uninhabited globe. 

_ Seven. _ They’d split up the light and now they had to pay for it. A tense silence settled over the group. 

 

“Holy shit!” Lup yelled, her voice strung together by pure frustration and anger. And, well, that was the mood for the rest of that year. 

  
  


* * *

 

 

Once, over a lifetime ago, the members of the IPRE started a mission. They didn’t know it yet, but they would soon come to know. It would be a forever mission.

Infinity stretched in front of them as they fought and died, and fought on. 

Once, they’d tried to pause forever. Or no- they’d tried to stop forever, buttry as they might, you can’t stop infinity..

That’s the thing about infinity, it doesn’t stop. Forever is an endless cycle of time and pausing the flow of time? Not a great idea, as it turns out.

 

After the sixth cycle Taako resets, he stops trying to kill himself immediately. 

Lup, the woman who calls herself “Lup” (Lup isn’t a name), winds her arms around him and weeps for a solid three hours. She would probably go on longer, but Barry Bluejeans (her boyfriend? Husband, maybe, but he doesn’t see any rings.) pulls her away to somewhere private. 

He gets killed early in the year, but he doesn’t know what that means yet.

Lup doesn’t touch him again for a long while.

 

The twelfth cycle is the first cycle he sees all the way through. He sees how seven  _ things _ fall down, and he sees the scramble to get to them as fast as possible. They get two of the things before something comes to fight them.

Taako can’t see it, or maybe he can’t comprehend it. But there is something terrorizing the members of his “crew”. The people of the planet can’t see them either. The only thing convincing Taako it’s not made up is by how people are very much being killed by this invisible horror.

It kills him, too, and he is reset again. 

Most cycles, the ones he stays alive for at least, he spends on his own. He learns the names of the people around him, but he doesn’t care much. It's hard to care when your brain turns to static every three words they speak. When they keep looking at him like a lost and lonely child.

 

Magnus seems to be getting more quiet, docile, with every passing cycle. Sometimes he likes to inform Taako of his abandoned child’s age, though. It’s a good way to track time for all of them.

“Today they’re twentyfive, Taako.” He’d say, or

“Guess who’s forty-ninth birthday it is.”

“Sixty-two already.”

Eventually, it’s the only thing he’ll say on is own. Every year like clockwork.

“Seventy.”

“Eighty-four.”

No one questions what the unprompted numbers mean. Everybody knows.

 

Lucretia doesn’t seem too interested in staying around the others. Something Taako can very well understand.

He’s informed Lucretia is an archivist for their “journey”, whatever that means.

It can’t be a nice job, though. Her hands keep bleeding more and more everytime he sees her. Still, she grips her pens and writes on even as the blood is making her writings illegible.

 

 

Lup and Barry both seem to avoid him and want to spent time with him, simultaneously. 

Out of the two of them, Lup mostly tries to stick close, but Barry is never far behind. It gets slightly better over the years. Not much though.

If it gets too annoying he can just off himself. They mostly stay out of his way for a while after he does that.

 

 

Out of all of them, Merle might be his favorite, using that term very lightly. 

Merle doesn’t ask him questions. Merle doesn’t care that he doesn’t fucking know what’s going on. Merle doesn’t really seems to be all that upset about anything going on. 

He’s generally a very chill dude to be around, even if he can’t remember Taako’s name for shit.

 

 

The Captain is nice enough, too. Nice enough to mind his own shit. 

Taako likes it that way.

Most of the time, Taako’s more than good out here.

 

* * *

  
  


**Cycle 392**

 

The hunger has come, once again. As it always does. 

Magnus stands besides Captain, calmly waiting for orders. 

Magnus reminds Captain sometimes of what he was, during the years spent on Faerun. He’s a shell. 

A body without a will or wishes.

Somewhere around cycle 120 he stopped counting his child’s birthdays. He’d held on to it for a long time, but after Birthday #118 or so, he just couldn’t anymore. After that Magnus had gone rapidly downhill.

 

 

 

The Captain watches on as The Hunger once again destroys a world they couldn’t safe. It’s almost impossible to save a world now that the light of creation is shattered.

He watches quietly. His eyes unseeing, not unlike Magnus's.

 

Lucretia is in the corner, her special corner. The one she is always in. She’s writing, but only in the broadest sense of the word. Her sentences stopped being coherent long ago. Her scribbles frantic as she repeated the some words over and over, until she fills her book. Sometimes, they’re made up ones. Sometimes, they’re too soaked from the blood dripping down her hands to make out what the words say. Not that anybody tries anymore. They’d have to care to do that.

 

 

 

 

The twins are out on the battlefield. Lup’s lich form standing out above the crowd with her bright red cloak. 

She’s protecting her brother. Even if he doesn’t understand he is her brother. She’s protecting what’s left of him.

Barry isn’t here anymore. While Lup stepped over from feeding on love to feeding on desperation easily, Barry couldn’t make the jump. 

His sanity broke off, and his form fizzled out. The kind thing to do was to kill him entirely. 

Now, every year they reset, a body falls to the floor on her right. It’s empty. She can’t look at it, but the rest of them don’t care enough to clean it up. They have a bit of a pile of them now, on board. Lup avoids being on board of the ship as much as she can.

Taako is getting used to having her around, which is nice.

He’s not trying to get himself killed anymore, but he’s not avoiding it either. Which is why Lup stays with him. 

She needs her brother to keep her grounded. Though she knows that her real brother died centuries ago. She doesn’t know what that says about her. 

Lup’s floating. 

Above a sea of war and terror and she floats. 

Taako doesn’t see most of it, she knows. It comforts her, in a way. That he's still shielded from a part of the harm.

Lup waits for the starblaster to take off. 

And she waits. 

And she waits.

The sky is getting real dark when she realizes what is happening. 

“Oh.” she thinks. And then directly after that. “Okay.” 

She floats down to where her brother is hiding. He’s not hiding very well from the Hunger. She suspects he’s at least partially hiding from her, but she doesn’t pay it any mind.

“Hey.” she says. He looks up. “So I think this might be the end of our mission. The final one.”

“Oh.” He says. “Okay.” 

He smiles and it’s too fake not to see the blank void underneath it. The emotionless nothing.

He stands up straight and looks at her, expectantly. Lup gets closer to him and for a moment, they wait. 

For a moment nothing happens. 

Then a black thendrill comes out of nowhere, and strikes through Taako’s chest. He doesn't dodge it. She doesn't defend him. She’s close enough to him that it goes through her form, too. She positions her forehead against his as well as she can.

“I’m sorry you’ll have to make the journey to the afterlife alone.” she says.

“Don’t worry about Taako,” He tells her, blood falling from his mouth, “I’ve always been alone.”

It doesn't even hurt when he says that, which is how she knows it's time. She takes a deep breath, as well as she can being a lich, and let’s go. 

Her sanity, the thing she’s been trying so hard to preserve, everything that made her Lup, her memories. She let’s it go. 

How fitting, she thinks, for us to die together, too. After all these years. 

Though she knows her real brother has died centuries ago, couldn’t it be said that she’d died with him? She’s sure that the real her, the one that had died alongside the real Taako, would have said something like “It’ll be okay.” or  “I love you.”. But Lup wasn’t her anymore. And so she stayed silent.

His body falls limplessly through her form as she fizzles out of consciousness. 

 

 

Taako is falling. Taako is dead and he’s falling into a sea of souls, covered in the black tar of The Hunger. He can see it now. He can remember, too. 

For a moment, just a small moment, he remembers everything. 

“No, oh gods, no, please, Lup, please.. I love you.” are his last thoughts before he gets pulled into the hunger.

 

 

 

Captain watches the world being torn to bits and he doesn’t feel anything.

He’d love to say it’s because he’s out of touch with his emotions, but honestly, he doesn’t think he has any anymore.

Thinking about the end of this mission doesn’t fill him with hope. Seeing his crewmates getting killed doesn’t even ring any vague kind of concern.

Captain is empty. And he’s so, so tired.

 

 

He is still watching when the Hunger arrives at the door of his ship. He’d send Magnus away awhile ago, into the Hunger. Magnus had gone without complaint. Without goodbye. It wasn’t bothering Captain.

Merle had already left earlier in the cycle, or so he assumed. He’d wandered off and not gotten back yet. Something he did more often than not.

The Captain hang his robe covering the steering wheel. His thumb grazing over the IPRE logo on it. 

He turns to Lucretia.

“Lucretia.” He says. She doesn’t respond. She rarely does these days. But he knows she’s listening by the tightening on the grip of her pen.

“Lucretia. I need a favour.” he says, “I want you to kill me.”

Before he properly finishes his sentence, Lucretia has a hand in the air. She doesn’t look up, and she doesn’t use a wand, but her blood-stained fingers cramp around the air. Never pausing her writing with the other hand, she seamlessly continues writing. She doesn’t notice the body hitting the floor. Until eventually, the Hunger found its way inside, and consumed Lucretia. The last and final bird.

  
  


_ I saw seven birds. _

_ Too tired to fly from the storm. _

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact: for most of writing this fic, I've had a tab open where im writing a very fluffly blupjeans fic so i wouldn't angst myself out


End file.
